For this years Leigh art trails I've been collaborating with Simon Feather producing a body of work, painting for Simon and a video installation for me. 

Further information click here Colour, line & Boundaries

Statement

Simon and Tom met at last years Art Trail and struck up a conversation about the river, what they were doing art wise, they realised their work had some elements in common such as colour and line these were developed through conversations they had over a number of months distilling into perspectives of viewing the Thames estuary, noticing visual elements which were worked into their respective art practices, leading on to develop a collaborative work investigating ways of viewing the estuary and incorporating those ideas in their respective art practices, painting for Simon and video for Tom.

In the conversations there was a sense of going deeper into the ideas of boundaries, line and colour. Simon commented ‘that came from what you (Tom) was trying to achieve and having a greater understanding and bringing that into my own work, as it evolved, I wanted to compliment whatever the video would be, but also to not lose track of the idea of abstract (imagery) over landscape imagery. There's still an ambiguity there in my paintings.

Even though the imagery that was viewed and abstracted into colour, line and boundaries, the same views of the estuary changed on an hourly basis. For Simon's paintings they represent a snapshot of a continually evolving seascape and for Tom’s video an expression in time capturing the traffic and illustrating the idea of change not just in the estuary but the changes created by the video making process.

There was a distillation process occurring during the production of the works, not every idea survived, but the works combine to reflect that process and give a presentation of their observations of the Thames estuary.